Let the Stones Shine: Assessing the Potential of Microwear Analysis on Flint Artifacts to Refine the...

Microwear analysis of lithic artifacts offers potential to reconstruct the post-depositional history of prehistoric assemblages, as flint's microcrystalline structure preserves mechanical and chemical traces over time. While micro-use-wear studies have long examined tool function, their application to taphonomic processes remains underexplored. The techniques and protocols used in use-wear studies could be applied to reconstruct the taphonomic life-history of these artifacts, but this approach has not yet become mainstream. Here, we perform an in-depth review of use-wear literature and report our findings with organizing them into four main issues: the debates on the mechanical versus chemical origin of post-depositional polishes; the difficulties with classification or quantification of surface and ridges alterations; the distinction of dirt layers from alterations; and the experimental references available for assessing micro-alterations. The limitations we identify allow us to suggest the necessity of performing mineralogical analysis of post-depositional polishes to confirm their origin, systematic high-magnification assessment of alterations on surfaces/ridges-for instance using a simple ordinal scale to facilitate the analysis of large samples of artifacts-and adopting an efficient cleaning protocols prior to microwear analysis. We also conclude that there is a need to design and perform in vitro replication of natural polishes under controlled conditions that mimic the conditions of prehistoric sites in low entropy system close to "primary contexts." With this paper, we show that integrating the techniques of microwear analysis into the toolkit of geoarchaeology has the potential to advance the reconstruction of site formation processes.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41982-025-00225-2.